Windows 7: Triple boot XP, Vista, and Windows 7...

Cr00zng · 10 May 2009

I have four SATA II drives, four gig memory, etc, in my machine that have Windows XP and Vista dual-booting. Both OS's are installed on the same physical drives; about 150 gig each partition.

I've freed up one of the drives, changed the BIOS to boot from the DVD, and installed Windows 7, 64-bit. The installation completed without a hitch and the setup detected everything, sans the Viewsonic monitor. Windows did have a driver for the monitor, but I used the one for Vista 64-bit from Viewsonic and we are good.

After rebooting Windows 7, I expected to have couple of boot option but there's none. No XP and/or Vista, just Windows 7. I've tried to locate the bootmanager in Windows 7, but I couldn't find it and that worried me. There was no backup made since it should've picked up the other OS's.

I didn't touch any of the bootsectors, nor did Windows 7; the latter one did make the drive a primary disk and installed the boot record there. After modifying the BIOS, making the the XP/Vista drive the first drive to be booted, XP and Vista came back, but Windows 7 disappeared. I can boot either OS's by changing the order the drives are booted by the BIOS, but I rather have the choice for XP/Vista/7 in the boot menu.

I am not sure why Windows 7 didn't pick up on the other OS's; the reason could be the SATA drives, if I'd have to guess. Since "disk 1" was set as the first drive to boot by the BIOS, Windows 7 did not check other drives and declared itself the only OS.

The question is, how do I add Windows 7 to the Vista's boot menu, or alternatively, how do I add XP/Vista to 7's boot menu?
TIA...

Cr00zng

torrentg · 10 May 2009

Boot into Windows 7. Then use EasyBCD to add the XP and Vista partitions each as a boot choice. Use add/remove entries on the left side of the program. Don't forget to hit save after you add them. Not too tough. Post back if you need further help. Good luck.

EasyBCD: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

After you've done that successfully and booted into all 3 OS successfully, you can then work on getting rid of the second boot screen that will appear when booting either Vista or XP.

Cr00zng · 10 May 2009

Thanks Torrent, but couldn't I just use EasyBCD in Vista as well? In that case, Windows 7 can be removed rather easily; keep in mind that this is just RC1 version with time limit.

I've looked at the drives from within Vista and Windows Explorer does not show the drive where Windows 7 had been installed. The drive in itself does show up as "Healthy" NTFS active primary partition within Vista disk manager with no drive letter assign to it.

Adding Windows 7 from within Vista, either with BCDedit and/or EasyBCD won't work without assigning a drive letter for the Windows 7 drive. It doesn't seem like it would cause an issue for Windows 7 assigning the drive letter "I" or "J" under Vista, but I am not sure. Windows 7 will probably call it "C" or system drive anyway, correct?
TIA...

Cr00zng

SIW2 · 10 May 2009

Assign 7 letter in Vista Disk Management - shouldn't be a problem.

Cr00zng · 10 May 2009

Well, I did assign drive letter "J" under Vista and added the drive to the boot menu using BCDEdit. After the reboot, I have three entries:

Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7

Selecting Windows 7 does seem like starting up Vista instead of 7. Vista "Starting up Windows..." screen is displayed, but when it completes Windows 7 log on screen comes up. Evidently, I didn't enter the parameters correctly. It seems that Vista's boot manager, with its own splash screen, starts and then Windows 7 takes over. Oh well, as long as I don't have to change BIOS settings all the times, this is just fine as it is.
Thanks guys for your help...

Cr00zng

SIW2 · 10 May 2009

Hi,

If you booted from the Vista partition and are in 7 now, stay in 7, open an elevated command and type:

bcdedit /set {current} locale en-US

Press Enter.

Cr00zng · 11 May 2009

Quote: Originally Posted by SIW2

Hi,

If you booted from the Vista partition and are in 7 now, stay in 7, open an elevated command and type:

bcdedit /set {current} locale en-US

Press Enter.

That has been set by Windows 7 at the time of the installation. You could say that I have two boot manager installed on my system; one on the "drive 0" (Vista and XP) and one on the "drive 1" (Windows 7).

Here's the output for the "bcdedit" command from Windos 7, unchanged since install:

Code:

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=C:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {c6f82f90-3d77-11de-acfd-d81b0903b0fe}
displayorder            {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {c6f82f92-3d77-11de-acfd-d81b0903b0fe}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {c6f82f90-3d77-11de-acfd-d81b0903b0fe}
nx                      OptIn

This is the output of "bcdedit" command from Vista, Windows 7 added after install:

Code:

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=D:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {273b26bf-f4da-11dd-af3f-a98b068a0bfe}
resumeobject            {273b26be-f4da-11dd-af3f-a98b068a0bfe}
displayorder            {ntldr}
                        {current}
                        {273b26c2-f4da-11dd-af3f-a98b068a0bfe}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier              {ntldr}
device                  partition=D:
path                    \ntldr
description             Windows XP

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows Vista
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {eacd22e7-cfae-11dc-9a71-b4b57b4d0ffa}
nx                      OptIn

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {273b26c2-f4da-11dd-af3f-a98b068a0bfe}
device                  partition=J:
path                    \Windows\System32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
osdevice                partition=J:
systemroot              \WINDOWS
resumeobject            {1ae1339f-3dcd-11de-8834-806e6f6e6963}

When I am in Windows 7, it does not see the other boot record that the machine has on another drive. Nor does Vista see Windows 7's boot record. As such, the two boot records work independently from each other. I was able to manually add Windows 7 to Vista's boot manager, I know it's horrible way it's been added, but it works. Windows 7 is a choice in Vista's boot manager and it does boot it up on a funny way.

I do believe that this related to the SATA drives where you can select any of the drive as the first disk for the BIOS to boot the OS. Alternatively, it's the "end user" who messed things up but I rather not go there...

Cr00zng

SIW2 · 11 May 2009

Exactly, there is no setting in Vista bcd for 7 Locale.

That is why when you boot 7 thru the Vista bootmgr, you get the Vista bootscreen.

That is what the command I posted is for.

Triple boot XP, Vista, and Windows 7...-locale-setting2009-05-12_002418.jpg

Cr00zng · 11 May 2009

You're confusing me SIW, which isn't hard when it comes to this...

If I'd execute the command:

bcdedit /set {current} locale en-US

Where would it change boot manager, Vista or Windows 7, and what is the change that it would do?
TIA...

Cr00zng

Cr00zng · 11 May 2009

Duh, I should've looked at the content of the bcdedit output in Windows 7, before I've posted the previous message:

Code:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=D:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {273b26bf-f4da-11dd-af3f-a98b068a0bfe}
resumeobject            {273b26be-f4da-11dd-af3f-a98b068a0bfe}
displayorder            {ntldr}
                        {eacd22e6-cfae-11dc-9a71-b4b57b4d0ffa}
                        {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier              {ntldr}
device                  partition=D:
path                    \ntldr
description             Windows XP

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {eacd22e6-cfae-11dc-9a71-b4b57b4d0ffa}
device                  partition=G:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows Vista
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
osdevice                partition=G:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {eacd22e7-cfae-11dc-9a71-b4b57b4d0ffa}
nx                      OptIn

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\System32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  en-US
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \WINDOWS
resumeobject            {1ae1339f-3dcd-11de-8834-806e6f6e6963}

The output in my previous post was from a text file that I've captured yesterday for Windows 7.

The command of "bcdedit /set {current} locale en-US" tells boot manager to use the English splash/bootup screen. Not specifying the locale defaults to the boot manager's locale it seems.
Thank for your help guys...

Cr00zng

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